Abstract

"This paper re-examines the work of Dallas Smythe in light of the popularization of Internet-enabled
mobile devices (IMD). In an era of ubiquitous connectivity Smythe’s prescient analysis of audience
‘work’ offers a historical continuum in which to understand the proliferation of IMDs in everyday life.
Following Smythe’s line of analysis, this paper argues that the expansion of waged and unwaged digital
labour facilitated by these devices contributes to the overall mobilization of communicative, cognitive
and co-operative capacities – capacities central to the accumulation strategies of ‘informational
capitalism’. As such, the rapid uptake of these devices globally is an integral component in this
mobilization and subsumption. In the case of Smythe’s provocative (and somewhat controversial)
concept of the audience commodity the work of the audience is materially embedded in the capitalist
application of communication technologies. Consonant with Smythe’s emphasis on the centrality of
communication and related technologies in the critical analysis of contemporary political economies, this
paper elaborates upon the concept of digital labour by rethinking Smythe’s theory of the audience
commodity as a central principle organizing the technical and social evolution of IMDs."